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Increased Abundance and Nursery Habitat Use of the Bull Shark (Carcharhinus leucas) in Response to a Changing Environment in a Warm-Temperate Estuary

A general northward shift in marine species distributions has been observed in the western North Atlantic Ocean, which may have significant ecological consequences. Large coastal sharks can have wide migratory distributions but show fidelity to specific nursery habitats. Here we show evidence for nu...

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Autores principales: Bangley, Charles W., Paramore, Lee, Shiffman, David S., Rulifson, Roger A.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Nature Publishing Group UK 2018
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5902476/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29662126
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-018-24510-z
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author Bangley, Charles W.
Paramore, Lee
Shiffman, David S.
Rulifson, Roger A.
author_facet Bangley, Charles W.
Paramore, Lee
Shiffman, David S.
Rulifson, Roger A.
author_sort Bangley, Charles W.
collection PubMed
description A general northward shift in marine species distributions has been observed in the western North Atlantic Ocean, which may have significant ecological consequences. Large coastal sharks can have wide migratory distributions but show fidelity to specific nursery habitats. Here we show evidence for nursery range expansion into Pamlico Sound, North Carolina by a marine apex predator, the Bull Shark (Carcharhinus leucas). Previous assessments have shown little to no use of estuarine North Carolina waters as nursery habitat by Bull Sharks from 1965–2011. Juvenile sharks were rarely captured in a fishery-independent gillnet survey conducted by the North Carolina Division of Marine Fisheries (NCDMF) from 2003–2011, but were present every year from 2011–2016. Juvenile Bull Shark presence in the Sound was strongly related to early summer temperatures and late summer salinities, which have increased in the estuary over the 13 survey years, and further evidence for increasing water temperatures in Pamlico Sound was found in a 45-year data set for the NCDMF estuarine trawl survey. These results suggest that increasing water temperature and salinity have allowed Bull Sharks to expand their nursery habitat. This shift will have unknown, but potentially strong, impacts on both the local ecosystem and interactions with humans.
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spelling pubmed-59024762018-04-25 Increased Abundance and Nursery Habitat Use of the Bull Shark (Carcharhinus leucas) in Response to a Changing Environment in a Warm-Temperate Estuary Bangley, Charles W. Paramore, Lee Shiffman, David S. Rulifson, Roger A. Sci Rep Article A general northward shift in marine species distributions has been observed in the western North Atlantic Ocean, which may have significant ecological consequences. Large coastal sharks can have wide migratory distributions but show fidelity to specific nursery habitats. Here we show evidence for nursery range expansion into Pamlico Sound, North Carolina by a marine apex predator, the Bull Shark (Carcharhinus leucas). Previous assessments have shown little to no use of estuarine North Carolina waters as nursery habitat by Bull Sharks from 1965–2011. Juvenile sharks were rarely captured in a fishery-independent gillnet survey conducted by the North Carolina Division of Marine Fisheries (NCDMF) from 2003–2011, but were present every year from 2011–2016. Juvenile Bull Shark presence in the Sound was strongly related to early summer temperatures and late summer salinities, which have increased in the estuary over the 13 survey years, and further evidence for increasing water temperatures in Pamlico Sound was found in a 45-year data set for the NCDMF estuarine trawl survey. These results suggest that increasing water temperature and salinity have allowed Bull Sharks to expand their nursery habitat. This shift will have unknown, but potentially strong, impacts on both the local ecosystem and interactions with humans. Nature Publishing Group UK 2018-04-16 /pmc/articles/PMC5902476/ /pubmed/29662126 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-018-24510-z Text en © The Author(s) 2018 Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
spellingShingle Article
Bangley, Charles W.
Paramore, Lee
Shiffman, David S.
Rulifson, Roger A.
Increased Abundance and Nursery Habitat Use of the Bull Shark (Carcharhinus leucas) in Response to a Changing Environment in a Warm-Temperate Estuary
title Increased Abundance and Nursery Habitat Use of the Bull Shark (Carcharhinus leucas) in Response to a Changing Environment in a Warm-Temperate Estuary
title_full Increased Abundance and Nursery Habitat Use of the Bull Shark (Carcharhinus leucas) in Response to a Changing Environment in a Warm-Temperate Estuary
title_fullStr Increased Abundance and Nursery Habitat Use of the Bull Shark (Carcharhinus leucas) in Response to a Changing Environment in a Warm-Temperate Estuary
title_full_unstemmed Increased Abundance and Nursery Habitat Use of the Bull Shark (Carcharhinus leucas) in Response to a Changing Environment in a Warm-Temperate Estuary
title_short Increased Abundance and Nursery Habitat Use of the Bull Shark (Carcharhinus leucas) in Response to a Changing Environment in a Warm-Temperate Estuary
title_sort increased abundance and nursery habitat use of the bull shark (carcharhinus leucas) in response to a changing environment in a warm-temperate estuary
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5902476/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29662126
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-018-24510-z
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